


the native returns

by steamcurious



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Isaac Feels, Isaac returns to Beacon Hills, Isaac-centric, M/M, Pining, Scott is away at college, canon divergent after 3b, new pack feels, squint-and-you'll-miss-it Sterek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:49:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steamcurious/pseuds/steamcurious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That Scott, the one Isaac imagines, is nothing more than Isaac’s impression of a boy who’s been buried under three years’ worth of grit and pain and love and sex and fight and fun. Isaac is the last person who could guess the man Scott is now. He’s spent a few late nights in cyber cafes, haunting social media via hacked profiles, but Scott isn’t the chatty, open adolescent he used to be, full of meaningless status updates and swapping in-jokes on Stiles’s wall. The only information these sessions have yielded is that Scott decided, briefly and ill-advisedly, to try a goatee.</p>
<p><i>He’s not your alpha anymore,</i> a terrible little voice reminds him. <i>And he sure isn’t anything else.</i></p>
<p> </p>
<p>Then, just as he’s drifting to sleep,</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <i>And he never was.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the native returns

Other than a new IKEA and a remodeled Taco Bell, Beacon Hills does not look any different than when Isaac left it three years ago. The change is not one that can be seen, but rather smelled, like the way he can smell the difference between a car that has recently been running and one that has sat unused for days. The town--his town--smells stale, unstirred, and Isaac instantly knows that Scott McCall has gone, must have taken all his adventure with him when he left. Isaac does not know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

He sleeps the first few nights in the park or, if he’s scared of getting caught, slips out into the woods and buries himself in leaves, like how he used to wind up on the nights of the full moon, slumped in a pile with his pack, or sometimes alone, or sometimes with Scott curled against him and smelling of sweat and earth. Those were warmer nights than these, though, and Isaac can barely stand a night alone, and he knows he will not be able to last much longer without four walls and a ceiling to protect him.

He needs a place--a _den_ , he remembers Derek saying, _all wolves need a den,_ and Isaac had laughed at that until he realized that Derek was by no means being ironic. He could settle into some cave in the woods, but real places take stability, and money, and rental histories. He has some money, which he keeps in his pocket when he’s awake to defend it and in his shoe when he’s not, and it’s probably enough for a deposit and maybe a month’s rent at someplace cheap. He starts to keep an eye out for signs offering work, but it seems Beacon Hills has gone stale in more ways than just those that pertain to Scott McCall.

Still, he applies for the small studio space above the laundrette. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He sits in the property management, using his lap as a surface and scrawling his information in uneven writing. Some of the things he writes are true; others aren’t. For his rental history, he copies down Chris’s old contact information from memory, even though he knows that number has been long disconnected. Then, without thinking, as though his autonomous hand is trying to curse this shot-in-the-dark attempt at self-preservation, he writes Ms. McCall’s address and number in the second space. Only after he’s turned in the application--along with a $20 application fee--does he start mentally referring to this decision as a _mistake._

He hasn’t left any way for the management group to contact him, so he checks back two days later, and he’s surprised to see that the keys to his new unit are offered to him. He hands over most of his money for them, and he collapses on the bare floor as soon as he treks across town and lets himself in. _Mine,_ he thinks. It’s a strange thought. No space has ever felt like his before except perhaps, horrifically, the inside of the freezer.

He hadn’t realized how small the apartment would be--how confining its walls would feel compared to the wide-open spaces of the park and the woods. He picks himself up from the floor and pries open the two small windows, desperate for fresh air. He sleeps when the sun goes down, curled up close enough to the door that, if he gets anxious, he can reach a sleepy arm up and touch the doorknob--touch it, never turn it. He only needs to know that there’s a way out if he needs it.

 

When there’s a knock on his door a week after he moves in, he thinks at first that it might be Derek. He thinks this because when he came home the day before he found that the triskelion had been traced onto his door in chalk, and he imagines this is Derek’s method of leaving his calling card. _I know you’re here,_ it means. _I’ll come back later._  
  
But it isn’t Derek at the door. Instead, it’s Ms. McCall, looking exactly as Isaac saw her last, three years ago. She might even be wearing the same scrubs. He remembers their last encounter, has thought of it frequently over the years. _I know you boys are so busy,_ she had said, her eyes red from tears but smiling gently in that exhausted way of hers, like the way Scott also had sometimes. _But would it kill you take care of yourself,_ mijo _?_ And then she had run her fingers through his hair--not recklessly, but with that pause she always used to take, as if to ask permission, waiting for the way Isaac would faintly twitch into it, because even though he would always flinch at a reaching hand, it didn’t mean he hated the contact.

Touch didn’t have to be taking. Sometimes it could give. That was what the McCalls had taught him.

And now here is Ms. McCall-me-Melissa, eyebrows drawn together in concern, arms full of brown paper bags. “Oh, it _is_ you,” she is saying. “When they called me, I--oh, Isaac.” And she shoves the paper bags aside--inside the apartment, familiarly invading his space--and she moves to hug him, pausing the instant before contact to ask.

He withdraws, pulling into himself, and in that instant he learns something about himself, something about how much he has changed. He remembers the lessons of the McCalls like he remembers the Spanish Scott had taught him: as random, meaningless pieces of information, not something to be applied to his life in any way.

Ms. McCall can feel him pull back, and her arms fall. Somehow, she does not look hurt, only more concerned, and she walks into the apartment without being invited exactly like he has seen her walk into patients’ rooms at the hospital.

“They called you?” His voice sounds cracked, unused.

She hoists the bags up again, holding them against her hip and flashes him a smile. “I’m so glad you gave them my information. I gave you a good reference--said you were very clean and always paid on time.”

“You lied for me.”

She shrugs, before walking with purpose toward the pitiful kitchenette. “You were clean.”

Only when she starts unloading the contents of her paper bags into the bare shelves does he realize what she has brought.

“Somehow I knew,” she begins, that _tsk-tsk_ tone clear in her voice, “that you wouldn’t have stocked up on the staples. What have you been feeding yourself, anyway?”

He doesn’t want to tell her that mostly, he’s been hunting, so he’s grateful that she doesn’t wait for an answer.

“I still have dreams about your pesto, so I know you’re more than capable of cooking for yourself, but I thought that maybe I could whip something up for you. Where are your utensils?” She opens and closes the drawers, which even sound empty. “Okay,” she says, still smiling. “I’ll bring some of those next time. How about I order you a pizza?”

Softly, “Ms. McCall--”

Brightly, “How many times have I told you to call me--”

Whispered, “Please.”

She stills now, turning to him and sliding the final drawer closed. Her expression is warm, but her lower lip trembles a little, and when she says, “Okay,” again, he can hear something in her voice that he can’t name. “Don’t be a stranger,” she says, letting herself out of the apartment.

The next time there’s a knock on the door, it still isn’t Derek. A spotty pizza delivery girl is holding three large meat lovers’ pizzas, already paid for by card. Isaac is so moved that he chokes down the first few slices around a sizeable lump in his throat. His place, which had so recently smelled only of industrial cleaner, mold, and Isaac, now smells like grease and pepperoni and Ms. McCall.

He closes the windows to keep the breeze from wafting the smell away.

 

The next knock on the door is Derek, whose eyes widen and whose mouth twists into a frown when he sees Isaac.

“You,” he says.

Isaac knows how long he’s been gone, but still he isn’t expecting Derek to have been surprised at the identity of the omega who has been trailing his smell around Beacon Hills for two weeks now and whose door Derek had sniffed out without difficulty. Isaac learns this now, too: how much his own scent has changed, the degree to which time and place can alter something that had once felt so innate.

Derek clearly doesn’t trust this discrepancy, this wide gulf between what he is experiencing and what he remembers, so Isaac feels the need to speak. “Hey. Come on in.”

It’s early in the morning, but then, Derek has always been an early riser. Isaac feels sleep-addled still, but at least he can offer Derek some of the instant coffee Ms. McCall brought the day before. When Derek turns it down, Isaac makes it for himself instead, heating an old paper cup in the ancient microwave and stirring the crystals in with his finger.

Derek doesn’t ask him what’s brought him back, just as he doesn’t ask what drove him away. Too frequently, Isaac can’t tell if Derek doesn’t care, or if he already knows. He doesn’t comment on the lack of furniture, either, and he instinctively leaves the spot by the door--which Isaac has been referring to mentally as his _bed_ \--alone. Instead, he meanders, expanding wordlessly into the corners of the room Isaac hasn’t entered yet. Maybe he’s marking it out, but if so, it doesn’t seem to be in a possessive way. He’s curious, Isaac realizes, looking without touching. Definitely not alpha-Derek anymore.

Derek’s next words surprise Isaac just as he’s almost half done with his too-strong coffee. “I’ve got a job for you,” he says, and he gives Isaac something that’s close to a smile.

Isaac is no one’s charity case, and he doesn’t like when people answer questions he hasn’t even asked, as though they can read him easily. He likes thinking there’s a definite wall between his truth and what others perceive. That way, some piece of himself stays _his_ , and damn those people who think they can knock down all his walls, think they can _know_ him or _help_ him. He hates that it’s Derek now just as he hated that it was Ms. McCall yesterday, but he’s still every bit as desperate as he was--as he has been for a long time--and so, after tossing back the gritty dregs of his coffee, he mumbles reluctantly, “When do I start?”

 

Derek has an auto shop, out along the highway, a little ways south of Beacon Hills. “This way,” he says, “we get business when anyone breaks down headed out of town. We’re normally the only ones within AAA towing range.”

He says it with a kind of pride, as though he’s expecting Isaac to call him a genius. Instead, Isaac walks around the white sedan that’s hoisted up in the garage. He stoops and considers the space beneath it. Even from this distance, his hands start to twitch.

“I can’t get under there,” he stammers, ashamed of how weak he sounds. _Some things,_ he thinks bitterly, _will never change._

But Derek’s hand falls on his shoulder. He’s never learned to ask permission, and Isaac flinches, but he’s glad for the reassurance all the same, and he’s even glad that Derek doesn’t immediately draw away. “I’ve got all that covered,” he says. “I need you over here.”

Derek shows Isaac the blowtorch, which he holds like he might hold an explosive, and Isaac can’t help but notice the way Derek holds his breath the entire time he handles the flame. _He doesn’t like the fire,_ Isaac realizes, _the same way I don’t like it under the car._ He can smell Derek’s fear as he wields the tool, and something about the recognition of the scent calms Isaac, soothes him enough to follow Derek’s lead, braising a sheet of scrap metal until it’s hot enough to be bent out of place.

When Isaac returns home that night he’s exhausted. He’s forgotten what a day of work feels like, how it makes him ache and burn and feel _filled_ when he’s felt so empty. His hackles rise at the strange mix of smells swirling in his room, Derek’s scent chief among them, but when he breathes in deeply he finds it is easy to grow calm. As he curls up beneath the door knob, closing his eyes and beginning to drift, the word _pack_ flashes across his mind, but he shakes it away. What is a pack, after all, without an alpha?

 

“He’s coming home for a visit soon,” Ms. McCall says, and although she’s clearly thrilled by the news, she keeps her voice tempered and even, as though anticipating that Isaac’s reaction will not be one of overwhelming enthusiasm.

She has caught him after work early the next week. She stopped by before, he knows, because he’s smelled her in the hall, that same oatmeal-almond-hand-sanitizer melange she’s always had. She has stopped by nearly every day since her first visit, but he’s always been out, either working at Derek’s or running in the woods or wandering around town. Some days, her scent has been faint, as though she merely rapped at his door and then moved on, but other days, it’s clear she’s waited, calling through the door after him, because her scent is stronger, lingers concernedly in the hallway carpet.

Today, she knocked not half an hour after his return from work. She’s in old, rumpled scrubs, which makes it clear that she, too, has just gotten off shift, but still she’s carried up a box of kitchenware--“Just old things from the house,” she says, but at least one serving spoon still has the tag on--and has started to unload it before Isaac takes over.

“Have a seat,” he tells her, and she only raises an eyebrow, because of course there isn’t anyplace to sit. So, she leans against the counter and watches him for a while, making small conversation about her job, asking about his, and so on. It’s nice, until the conversation naturally turns to the one topic Isaac has been hoping to avoid, but of course there’s no avoiding Scott. Not in Beacon Hills.

She tells him that Scott will be in town this weekend, and Isaac loses control of his breathing, but he faces into the corner of the kitchenette and counts, slowly and silently, until he can feel himself calming. _Just a weekend,_ Isaac thinks. _It will be easy to avoid him for a weekend._ After all, he’s done it for three years.

Even without enhanced hearing, she must have be able to sense the ragged scrape of his breaths, the wild rhythm of his heart he’s struggling to command, because she switches topics. “There’s something else I brought over,” she says, “down in the car. I thought it might help the place feel a little more like home.”

She throws him the keys, and he goes down to her car, where he sees that she’s somehow managed to fit the old brown armchair from her bedroom into the backseat. With some maneuvering, he gets it out of the seat, and he’s able to carry it up the stairs with no difficulty, even if the shape makes it a little unwieldy. By the time he brings it through the door, Melissa already has food heating on the stove, and she gives him a look as if to say, _Well, you can hardly stop me now._ Isaac almost laughs, and, at her suggestion, he positions the chair under the window. When they eat, he insists that she take the chair, and he sits cross-legged in front of her.

When she leaves, he thinks about letting her hug him, but his body still withdraws, and she gives him his space.

Late that night, Isaac is leaning back in the chair, its footrest kicked up but not long enough to accommodate his sprawling legs. He has long since digested the food Melissa made--werewolf metabolism--but the taste of it remains in his mouth.

 

The black SUV is dented all over. “Old hail damage,” Derek explains. “She’s fixing it up to sell.”

It’s Isaac’s first real responsibility, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. He finds he’s glad for the dark color, which seems to forgive the mistakes he makes, bending and shaping again and again as though it will never be smooth enough. The work keeps him occupied all day Friday, late into the night and long after Derek has left. He doesn’t go home, choosing instead to sleep on the uncomfortable old loveseat in the reception area. He’s not avoiding Scott, he tells himself, but it doesn’t help that sleep is so hard to find, or that he occupies his thoughts by trying to imagine Scott’s homecoming in real time. _He’s pulling up now,_ Isaac thinks, eyes refusing to remain closed. _Melissa’s running out, and he’s hugging her. Not-so-subtly mentioning how starved he is, even though he’s eaten three times on the road. He’s got a pile of laundry in his trunk, which he’ll forget to do until Sunday afternoon when Melissa reminds him, and…._

And nothing. It’s a fiction. That Scott, the one Isaac imagines, is nothing more than Isaac’s impression of a boy who’s been buried under three years’ worth of grit and pain and love and sex and fight and fun. Isaac is the last person who could guess the man Scott is now. He’s spent a few late nights in cyber cafes, haunting social media via hacked profiles, but Scott isn’t the chatty, open adolescent he used to be, full of meaningless status updates and swapping in-jokes on Stiles’s wall. The only information these sessions have yielded is that Scott decided, briefly and ill-advisedly, to try a goatee.

_He’s not your alpha anymore,_ a terrible little voice reminds him. _And he sure isn’t anything else._

Then, just as he’s drifting to sleep,

_And he never was._

 

There were moments, Isaac swears, when it could have been more--moments when they walked right up to the edge and stared over, both of them aware that they could have taken the step, but they didn’t do it. One was healing, then the other. For a while, there was nothing but time. Then Allison, then Kira. Then, there was no time at all. Over the years, Isaac has clung to these moments, these meaningful looks, these long nights spent clutching each other, bodies curling into each other’s heat. _I can’t be nothing,_ he’s thought before (more than once), _because he thought I was something._

There were moments when the space between them felt like a one-way mirror, which only Isaac could see through. When he felt Scott was looking at his face but not seeing. _He has to know_ , Isaac thought, wildly and desperately, barely able to keep his heart from drumming out of his chest. When he thinks of the hours he spent within arm’s reach of Scott, each of his senses aware of the movements of Scott’s body, the sheer _presence_ of him, willing him just to _connect…._

_I must be nothing,_ he’s thought before (more than once), _because he never once noticed._

He tries not to think these thoughts anymore. This is the desperation of his lonely youth. He knows now that he doesn’t need the approval of others, that he’s able to survive without _pack,_ without the family and the devotion that Scott seemed every day to promise. He doesn’t even know if the sexual element--the immense, inescapable pull and thrum of arousal that Scott could ignite with a word or even a smile--ever meant anything, anyway, or if it was all a part of that tether a beta is supposed to feel with its alpha. Since leaving, he’s kissed and fucked and been fucked, and he’s never felt half of what he always imagined it would feel like with Scott.

So he’s not surprised when he dreams of Scott, and he’s not surprised to wake up hard and aching. It isn’t a new sensation, but he busies himself with work until it subsides. He’s not too proud to touch himself and think of Scott--he’s done this before, as well--but he’s a coward, afraid to leave the stench of his shame and loneliness here on the reception office loveseat. If Derek, who comes in later in the day, can smell the frustration and self-denial, he’s kind enough not to mention it.

 

Isaac’s been finished with the SUV for hours, but he doesn’t know where else he can go. He meanders the yard, hands in his pockets, kicking at rocks as though he’s a child. He can feel Derek’s growing impatience long before he hears the annoyed “Just go home.”

He goes, but he doesn’t go home. He walks around Beacon Hills, the same places he used to wander when he would avoiding heading back to his father’s home. The movie theater. The Mexican restaurant. The arcade. He stops by a bookstore. All those long hours he spends staring and thinking, he might as well stare at one of these, he thinks, and he picks up a few novels whose covers grab his attention. Allison swore by novels, he remembers, and even Scott got into them for a while. _Maybe he loves novels now,_ Isaac can’t help but think. _Maybe that’s his way of remembering her._ He waits until late, far later than Scott could possibly come by his place, before finally turning to head home.

He lets his mind wander as he walks. He thinks of Allison, and he thinks of Scott, and he thinks of the dents in the hood of the black SUV, of directing the flame until the metal sheet became malleable enough to be fitted back into its proper shape. He finds his block without thinking once of where he is going, which is maybe a sign that he’s really starting to think of his new place as _home,_ the way he used to be able to work his way back to the McCalls’ place from any corner of Beacon Hills, no matter how rattled or bruised or bleeding.

Because his thoughts are faroff, and because the wind comes from behind rather than ahead, his first indication that he might not be alone is when, above the noise of the clattering, sloshing laundry machines, he can hear a familiar voice.

“--even know if he’s coming at all, buddy, and it’s super cold and I, for one, would like to capitalize on that stir fry your mom mentioned would be in the fridge and--what, what is it?”

Isaac expects the voice, but it brings him up short all the same.

“Stiles,” says Scott, low and urgent. “Shut up.”

Because Scott can already smell him, the wind betraying his exact position. He can’t turn and walk away now, and he curses himself for his carelessness, and he feels like an idiot for the lateness of the hour and the books that he’s carrying. He steps out around the laundrette so that they can see him, but he purposefully looks down, digging in his pocket for his keys.

He can hear Stiles’s intake of breath and his small “Woah” as he takes Isaac in, as though he hadn’t remembered what he looked like, or hadn’t really expected him to show at all. Isaac listens harder, though, listens for that familiar thrumming of Scott’s heart. When he finds it, it’s gentle and it’s rhythmic. Isaac studies it, breathes deeply, tries to match his own to it. He refuses for his heart to betray him like it always used to do.

_Your own body is yours to control,_ Chris had always said. _Master your breath, master your body._

Even so, Isaac can’t stop his heartbeat from leaping once, loud enough for anyone to hear, when Scott speaks.

“Isaac.”

Isaac looks up then and takes them both in. Stiles, though he’s grown a little broader in the shoulders and perhaps dresses a little better now, could still pass for a high school student, but Scott is definitely a college boy, wearing a UC Davis T-shirt over loose jeans. He hasn’t lost the muscle, but he’s grown more comfortable with it. His face, too, has lost the last vestiges of boyish roundness. His brow hangs; his jaw clenches; in some ways, he looks more like Derek than he used to, although Isaac doesn’t imagine Scott would admit as much. He doesn’t smile when Isaac looks at him, but neither does he assume Stiles’s pained, anticipatory grimace. He merely blinks, and waits.

Isaac’s own face is a blank, an expression that tends to read as confused, but there’s little doubt he’s been expecting Scott (even if Stiles’s presence is something of a surprise). His mouth has gone dry, but he maintains focus on his breathing, on keeping his heartbeat low and mild, and if there’s a change, Scott gives no sign of having noticed.

“Hi,” he says.

The tension refuses to leave Scott’s face, clinging to him like a spritz of cologne, but he tries a smile, and Isaac can feel his own heart clench, and Scott’s thrum, once, as if in reply.

“I suppose you guys want to come upstairs,” Isaac says, ruffling the fingers of his free hand through his unwashed curls, and Stiles, shivering, is too quick with his “Yes, please!” Scott relaxes, then, lets out a sudden laugh, his eyes crinkling up, and Isaac’s feet feel weightless all the way up to his landing.

First thing, Stiles heads to the bathroom, leaving Scott and Isaac all alone. Isaac busies himself unloading his purchase, stacking the books on the floor because there aren’t any shelves. He doesn’t fully turn his back on Scott; he can feel that the wolf in him has its hackles raised, too acutely aware of the presence of an alpha on its territory. He doesn’t want to leave himself vulnerable--never mind that Scott’s presence has turned Isaac entirely into one large, vulnerable chasm.

_He doesn’t have to know,_ Isaac reminds himself. And, judging by the questioning silence and curious, searching glances Scott keeps sending, he _doesn’t_ know, not by half, what his scent is doing. Unlike Derek, Scott doesn’t feel the need to wander the small apartment. He stands in the middle of the space as if he can command it every bit as easily from here, and Isaac can feel his warmth and his smell and his taste spreading through the very air.

It’s Isaac who breaks the silence, speaking just as Scott opens his mouth to do so. “You look different,” he says. “Stronger.”

Whatever Scott was going to say, he swallows. Isaac isn’t sure whether to be pleased or disappointed.

“Yeah, maybe,” Scott answers. He keeps his voice low as though to keep Stiles from listening. Isaac casts his hearing down the hallway toward the bathroom: the toilet is flushing, the faucet running. Seconds more of privacy, but he’s not sure he can survive it. More than anything, he wants to keep the conversation light, easy, treading these simpler paths. He’s afraid of Scott, afraid of a thousand things he might say-- _You smell different_ or _Where have you been?_ or _Why did you leave?_ or, worst of all _Why did you come back?_

Instead, Scott says, casting a look around, “You live here alone?” and Isaac answers with a nod. Scott’s nostrils flare, taking in the faint impressions of Melissa’s visits (regular) and Derek’s (rare) and the Chinese delivery driver’s (embarrassingly frequent). He turns his head toward the armchair in the corner before sending Isaac a quizzical glance. Isaac tries to keep his face blank, but he knows that Scott can smell the scent of the McCall household that’s so deeply sunken into the chair that it’s become a part of the upholstery itself. Doubtless, Scott can smell the fact that Isaac’s taken to sleeping on this chair rather than his old spot curled up by the door.

Stiles comes back, drying his hands on his jeans. He looks between Scott, standing in the main room dead center, and Isaac, crouching by the wall, and lets out an awkward laugh. “You two done sniffing each other’s butts yet? I’m happy to avert my eyes if there’s more marking to do.”

Isaac straightens, rising to his feet and stretching to his full height. He’s always liked that he’s taller than both of them. Sometimes, it’s nice to have a superficial method of reminding them that, yes, they’re together and yes, he’s alone, but that doesn’t always mean that they’re more powerful. “Good to know Stiles’s dog jokes are one of the few constants of the universe.”

“Never not funny,” Stiles insists. “You got any food in this place? We’re starved.”

“Stiles,” Scott says, almost a growl, but his stomach rumbles at that exact second, and both Isaac and Scott hear it and start to laugh, gazes meeting with a spark of warmth.

“I can order something in,” Isaac offers, and an hour later they’re scraping the bottom of their takeout boxes. Stiles has sprawled himself out on the ground, Scott is settled into the armchair, and Isaac is across the room, back to the wall. He’s just starting to accept their invasion. It helps that they’ve long since taken over the conversation, talking about nothing the way they always have done, only aiming the odd comment in Isaac’s direction to fill him in.

“Isn’t that the TA you like? He’s totally into this TA--

“I don’t _like_ her, she’s just a good TA, and anyway, she said my essay was way off-topic or something, and since I can’t cite half the occult stuff I used--this is for my folklore class, by the way--”

“What use is that even going to be, anyway? He’s studying education.”

“What are you talking about? Folklore is totally relevant to education. Anyway, I’m basically training to be emissary, but there’s hardly a major for _that_ \--besides, this is coming from the guy who thinks a film studies class is relevant to pre-vet.”

“Too bad film studies is a total snore.” Scott’s laugh brightens the room, and Isaac loses control for an instant--not the first time--and his heart leaps, but maybe Scott doesn’t hear because he doesn’t even look over this time. “Just death playing chess and a ton of cowboys.”

They keep talking, and Stiles recommends that they watch a movie Scott mentions. It’s on Netflix, he thinks, and Scott agrees.

“No TV,” Isaac says, although this should really be self-evident.

“No problem,” says Stiles, already pulling a slender computer from his bag, opening it up and hacking into the laundrette’s wifi. Soon, the computer is set up on the floor, and the film is playing. Stiles sprawls on his stomach on the carpet and, at Scott’s insistence, the other two share the armchair, pressing close (but not too close). Isaac had forgotten how pleasant it is to allow a narrative to take over, other people walking and talking. He’s never cared much for movies or television, but he likes silence and he likes knowing he won’t be addressed for however long the movie lasts, and tonight he likes the way Scott narrates supplementary material now and then along with the movie, not expecting an answer, his altered features catching the reddish light from the screen.

Isaac is tuned into just about everything but for the movie itself--the tapping of Stiles’s fingers on his phone screen as he sends text message after text message; the clanking of machines down below and occasional laughter of two teenagers who are making prank calls from the payphone; the way Scott’s toes wiggle inside his shoes as he, like Isaac, hasn’t felt comfortable shod, not ever since the bite made wild animals of the both of them; Isaac’s own heart, easy and regular as lapping waves, because of and in spite of the struggle it takes to keep it that way. Because of this extreme attention, Isaac notices the instant Stiles falls asleep--no longer than an hour into the movie. Scott catches it, too, and he and Isaac exchange smiles.

“Poor guy,” Isaac whispers, barely making noise, but Scott catches it and, chuckling, nudges Stiles’s sleeping form with the toe of his shoe. Stiles lets out a snort but does not wake, and Isaac laughs, now, wiping his eyes, which have grown a little bleary from fatigue, as well. When he lets his hand down, Scott is closer than he was before, his eyes narrowed a little as they rake over Isaac’s face, and that’s when it happens: his control slackens, and his heart leaps, for the smallest of moments, into his throat, the way it always used to do.

As though he has been waiting for just such a sign, Scott moves like a switch has been turned, leaning in and capturing Isaac’s mouth with his own, and any modicum of control Isaac might have regained over himself is gone, now. He grows desperate, not allowing himself to process the newness of this impossible sensation. He is entirely reaching, pressing, gasping. Shame was meant for other rooms, not for this armchair that, now that they no longer face forward, forces their bodies to roll together. Isaac can taste Scott and, when they pull back for air, he can feel Scott’s heavy breaths gust against his wet lips. Scott’s body is firm and strange against Isaac’s own, and Isaac has quickly grown hard and begun to roll his hips against Scott for friction.

“Maybe we should--” Scott gasps, his words a faint rasp, but Isaac silences him with a bruising kiss. He’s rocking harder, now, rolling into Scott, and receiving the lightest twitches of encouragement in return. Scott is hard, too, but he keeps his lap faced carefully away, so that Isaac is fucking against his hip--a distinction Isaac is determined not to think of now. Now, he only thinks of bliss, of Scott’s tight, hard body, and of the way, when their kiss breaks, he can feel Scott’s fingers tugging through his hair, can hear him whispering, “Yeah, Isaac, that’s good… Isaac, come on, yeah, that’s it, Isaac, good boy….”

When Isaac comes, he muffles his whimpers with an openmouthed kiss against Scott’s throat. He feels tears in his eyes, and the room slowly spirals around him. He clings to Scott, who is somehow the only stable thing in reach, and Scott’s fingers still grasp in Isaac’s hair, and the movie goes on and Stiles continues to snore like nothing has changed, but everything has. 

 

Three days later, after Scott has left town without once mentioning what happened in the old armchair in the darkness of Isaac’s apartment, Melissa drops by with something for Isaac.

“Turns out we save money on a family plan,” she says, “and a family plan means at least four devices. There’s Scott’s phone and his tablet, plus my phone, and then I thought I would grab this for you, in case--”

He takes it numbly, flipping it over in his hands.

Her voice shakes a little as she adds, “Whenever you need anything.” He can already tell that she’s expecting him to refuse it.

“Thank you,” he says.

It’s not until she leaves--advising him to freeze what’s left over of the pasta salad she made--that he realizes that not only is her number already programmed into the contacts list, but Scott’s is, too.

He hates that he’s been reduced to this again, this knowing Scott is just one gesture away but, crippled by fear and anxiety and worry and shame, still incapable of reaching out to him. He’s never felt more pathetic than when he’s like this, not even when he’s been locked away. He’s _powerless_ locked up. At the moment, he has power, but he’s too spineless to follow through.

He thinks back to the moment, trying to remember something--anything--about the way Scott tasted, the shape of the trapped bulge in his jeans, the rasp in his voice as he muttered those perfect words, but the memories are all intellectual, as though he’s reading them from a list, and the details are gone. He’s hungry to do it again, a scientist eager to verify data. Before Scott’s visit, he’d spent all his weeks in his new place without once touching himself, but now he does every night, and sometimes in the mornings, occasionally careful but frequently unable to keep from thinking about Scott, from digging his nose into the armchair deeply and inhaling what scent of him the fibers retain.

He’s got a blank message to Scott open on his phone for nearly a week before his phone buzzes, late one night, and Scott’s name flashes across the screen.

_yo hope u dont mind my mom got me ur new numbr! txt netime_

Some things, it seems, truly don’t change, and Isaac feels charmed to learn that Scott still texts like a teenager.

Still, he waits to respond. A day passes, in which Isaac goes to work but can barely keep his mind off of his phone, which he’s left on the desk in the office. When Derek brings the thing out to him after lunch, complaining that it won’t stop buzzing, and drops it into Isaac’s hand, at first he’s afraid that Scott has been offended by Isaac’s silence and has sent a tirade his way. Isaac ducks into the garage to shade out the glare on his phone screen, then flicks through a flood of messages from various numbers, all bearing a name and a short message.

_just so you have my number here it is it’s stiles by the way_

_Hi, lovely! It’s Kira just checking in._

_Hey Isaac, it’s Danny from high school. Scott McCall gave me this #, said you were back in town?_

_Lydia here. :* You’d better not be mopey, you sexy beast! hmu_

__Isaac’s head reels, and he taps a message to Scott._ _

_What’s this about??_

He paces while he waits for Scott to reply. He’s just decided to turn the phone off and head back to work when the response comes in. 

_so u r alive! figurd u cud use sum contacts :)_

Isaac goes back to work, feeling strange but keeping his phone in his pocket, and over lunch he sends a few replies, brief and clipped, but each message gets a response. He finds out that his old class has scattered itself all throughout the country. Lydia’s at an east coast school, where she’s studying subjects that would make Isaac’s ears bleed. She makes frequent trips to Europe, so the two of them text about France. With Danny, who’s in Arizona training to become a counselor, Isaac finds it’s surprisingly easy to talk about life back in Beacon Hills, and Danny, clearly homesick, makes an eager audience. Kira is at UC Davis with Scott and Stiles, but he doesn’t hear what she’s studying. (He doesn’t ask--can’t bring himself to truly want to know--whether she’s still with Scott, or how it ended, if it ended.) From Stiles, he gets caught up on all the paranormal shit that’s gone down since he left (berserkers and werejaguars and black magic, oh my!). In the face of so much, Isaac feels foolish when what he really wants to ask about is Scott--what Scott’s done and how he’s changed and what he wants and whether he’s said anything, ever, even once, about Isaac, or about Allison even, or about what happened to make Isaac leave, or what happened when they were brought together again. 

The one person he doesn’t text is Scott. His conversations with the others last for days, weeks, some more regular--Danny, Kira--and others more sporadic--Lydia, Stiles--but a steady, comforting thrum nonetheless. When Melissa drops by near the end of the month (she offers to take Isaac to the grocery story, where they wander the aisles together, Isaac pushing the cart and Melissa tossing in things he’ll need) she mentions all the activity his phone has experienced. 

“I didn’t mean to look,” she says. Then, she confesses, “I peeked because I was worried there wouldn’t be anything.” 

“As if Scott would stand for that,” Isaac mutters, and Melissa laughs. 

"I’ve raised my boys right, that’s for sure,” she says with an affectionate squeeze to Isaac’s arm, but it still takes him a moment to realize she means him, too, and he’s glad she’s not a werewolf, because he couldn’t have withstood anyone picking up on the strange _swoop_ he feels in his stomach at that thought. 

_If she knew,_ a cruel voice reminds him, and his joy turns cold in his chest, _if she knew what you did to Scott she’d hate you._

__

He receives a text after midnight, just after he’s drifted asleep, and he jerks awake to answer it before bothering to look at who it’s from.

_ima littlte drunnk but just wantd 2 say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!_

Isaac blinks blearily at the screen of his phone. His eyes flick up toward the date, and he’s shocked to see that yes, it is his birthday, after all. 

He replies before he has a chance to stop himself. 

_Drinking w/o me on my bday? not cool McCall_

_lol well share a few next time im home maybe when stiles isnt in the room yah? ;)_

He’s flushed and breathless from the thought alone, so Isaac jerks off before responding. He’s somehow even more frustrated after than before. 

_When will that be?_ he asks. 

And, much later, he gets the response. 

_sooooooon ;)_

__

It’s one week later, in fact, as Isaac’s trudging up his steps after work, that he catches Scott’s scent in the stairwell, too fresh to be residual, and he approaches his door, hope wild in his chest. He doesn’t find Scott waiting at his door, as he had hoped to do, but he quickly sniffs out a note Scott must have taped to the door but had since fallen under the radiator.

_Back in town for the night,_ it reads. _Come over when you get the chance._

So, with a few misgivings, Isaac dresses in his best pullover and walks all the way to the McCall house, which he hasn’t visited in all his time back in Beacon Hills. He’s a little surprised at how familiar the scent is to him still. For nearly the last mile, as soon as he catches the faint gust that is a mix of their hair products and wood polish and Glade plug-ins, Isaac is, for the first time since his return, overwhelmed with the sensation of a long-awaited homecoming. 

As soon as he’s on their block, Scott is stepping outside to greet him, running up to the front of the yard and wrapping him in a warm hug. Tears prick Isaac’s eyes as he holds Scott’s warm body against his own.

“It’s Thursday,” Isaac says. “Don’t you have classes tomorrow?” 

“Gave myself a long weekend.” Scott pulls away, grinning. “Anyway, someone needed to celebrate your birthday.” 

“C’mon inside, boys,” Melissa shouts, leaning out of the front door and waving. “It looks like rain.” 

Never mind that they’ve run together for hours and hours in the rain and thunderstorms, they still come when Melissa calls, and they sit where she directs and eat the food she brings them. Isaac flushes bright red when they sing him happy birthday and, although he would have been able to smell the cake even without wolf senses, he’s still shocked when he sees his name scrawled in icing, twenty candles lit and dripping wax. 

“Make a wish,” Scott reminds him. 

__

Melissa’s weather prediction comes true, and it’s pouring rain when she slips out for her night shift. She presses a warm kiss to Scott’s head, making a motherly _mmm_ as she does so for emphasis. There’s something disarming in the way Scott receives it, no sheepish smile or rolling eyes. When Melissa approaches Isaac and steps close, asking permission, he leans toward her as if by instinct, and she kisses his cheek with affection and whispers, “Happy birthday, honey.” 

“Love you,” Scott tells her as she leaves. Once she’s gone, the two boys collapse together onto the couch, and Scott flicks on the television, but they don’t pay attention. They talk long and late about everything and nothing. Isaac lets his heart run unheeded, allowing Scott to hear every pang, every leap, and it isn’t long before Scott’s moved into Isaac’s space, is nosing his ear as Isaac laughs. When Isaac kisses Scott, it isn’t only Isaac’s heart that misses a beat, and they play with pace: racing, bruising melting into languid, unrushed. For once in their lives, they have nothing but time. 

They’re lying back, Scott’s head on Isaac’s chest, their legs tangling together. They’re both hard, but it isn’t urgent; Isaac thinks he could lie forever like this. 

He knows something is coming by the way Scott’s heartbeat starts to race, but the question still makes him flinch when it comes. 

“Why didn’t you come back?” he asks, voice lower than the tapping of the rain. 

Isaac thinks back to his years spent in France, and elsewhere, always feeling chased by the ghost of Beacon Hills. “I don’t know,” he rumbles. 

“C’mon,” says Scott, a little desperate, and somewhere deep within, something in Isaac relents. 

“You asked Chris to come back,” he whispers. “But you didn’t ask for me. You needed help, but it didn’t occur to you that I could be that for you. And when Chris left--he was the last connection I had, and I guess I just… drifted.” The confession hurts, and he wishes Scott hadn’t asked him for it. He doubts it makes Scott feel any better, either. 

The two lie in silence a little longer, a bad taste filling Isaac’s mouth. Gone is the serenity that had existed between them moments before. 

But then, Scott’s hand is snaking up under Isaac’s shirt, and his fingers are smoothing down Isaac’s chest in long, warm caresses, and Isaac feels his temper still, soothed, and ebb away. Scott speaks, voice low, and Isaac closes his eyes to focus on the words. 

“Back then,” he says, “it always felt to me like you were right there, right by me. It felt like something we’d worked so hard to earn, considering where we started, but it also seemed… I don’t know, somehow inevitable. I guess I took that for granted. Actually, no, I _know_ I did. I didn’t think about all the ways that you might be needing things, acknowledgement and fulfillment and trust--things I thought you would wait in line for, no matter who else took precedence. You make yourself smaller, Isaac. You let others cut in front of you. You know, I think Mom recognized that about you the first time she saw you--something she said, she told me ‘That Isaac boy, he’s not the kind of kid to ask for things.’ At the time, I thought she meant that I should watch out, that you might just take whatever you wanted, but she was the one who realized that, if no one offered anything, you’d never have it at all. It’s a defense mechanism but it’s so, so much less than you deserve, and I can’t tell you how often, since you left, I’ve kicked myself for playing into it. I should have understood you better.” 

“Scott--” Isaac breathes, but Scott pushes on, voice shaking. 

“I should never have hit you,” he says. “I’m sorry for that. I know things changed, and I know it started then, and there were a million reasons for it, but when I think about how I hit you--after everything--” 

His hand has stilled on Isaac’s chest, and he’s shivering a little. Isaac moves his arms around Scott, pulls him in tightly, and they just breathe for a while, settling in against each other. 

It’s Isaac who breaks the silence, forcing the words past the lump in his throat. “Did you know?” When Scott is quiet, questioning, Isaac adds, “How I felt.” 

Almost imperceptibly, Scott’s head twitches _yes._

“It was you I wanted to leave most of all,” Isaac murmurs. “And it was you that brought me back.” 

__

Scott insists that Isaac stay the night, and Isaac puts up only a token amount of resistance. He knows what this means, and he knows where it’s going, and he’s ready for it when Scott lays him out on his bed and peels every piece of clothing away from him. To some extent, Isaac’s glad that this never happened when they were both kids, uncertain and grasping. Their time apart has let them encounter other bodies, to fuck and be fucked, and when they crash together now, there’s enough know-how for it to be graceful. Scott opens Isaac up with skill, mouthing along his hipbones in a way that has Isaac gasping and aching and almost ready to spill before Scott has managed to slide inside. Scott doesn’t move with the sharp decision that he always has in Isaac’s fantasies, but somehow this--the rolling, rocking movements--push Isaac even higher, and when he comes he shouts to the rafters and grips Scott tightly enough to tear skin. Scott follows a few pulses after, tumbling onto Isaac’s sweat-slick chest in the dizzy aftermath, rolling off and out of him only to pull him close and settle a thin sheet over both their bodies. 

The only words between them before they slip into sleep come from Scott, who whispers, gently, “Do you still--?” It doesn’t matter that Scott’s question is never finished, because no matter what he’s going to ask--about his father, his brother, or Derek, or Erica and Boyd, or Allison, or Beacon Hills, or leaving, or coming home, or Scott himself--the answer is the same. He nods into Scott’s shoulder, and he feels the kiss Scott presses into his hair as though he’s been anointed with it. 

__

The chill of winter arrives early, just before the Thanksgiving holidays bring the natives back to town. Lydia’s flight is almost delayed, and she sends Isaac a few Snapchats from the Boston airport with the caption _These fuckers better get their shit together stat_ before she’s able to bribe her way onto the only flight they’re letting through. Isaac has begged Derek to drive him to pick her up, so he’s able to wait at the gate for her, hoisting her bags and taking them out to where Derek’s car is waiting in the loading zone. She sits in the front and talks a mile a minute all their way back into Beacon Hills. Derek’s rolling his eyes, but he’s also looking more his old self than Isaac’s seen him in years. Still, Derek unsurprisingly turns down Lydia’s invitation to her Thanksgiving gathering. 

“Why?” she says, hands on hips as cold rain drips around her. Isaac’s digging her luggage out of the trunk. “You have big plans or something?” 

He only shrugs her off and drives away as soon as the trunk has closed, and Isaac explains to her how Derek has been lately, and she purses her lips and makes a frustrated little noise. 

“Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we,” she says, and Isaac’s about to suggest that she leave Derek be when she shines him the brightest smile and adds, “Hurry on in. The others should be here soon.” 

Scott, Kira, and Stiles drive in about an hour later, by which time Isaac and Lydia are already cooking up a storm. There are rounds of hugs and warm greetings before Scott joins them in the kitchen, and Kira and Stiles set out plates and napkins. Lydia gets music playing from her phone, the tinny sound of warm, lush tunes pouring out of the small speakers and expanding to fill the house her mother has vacated for the month. 

There’s a tense moment in conversation, when Kira accidentally mentions Allison and suddenly the rest of them go quiet. The food in Isaac’s mouth tastes gristly, too tough to chew, and he thinks of spitting it into his napkin, excusing himself to go outside. His father used to hit him when he cried, insisting that no one would want to see tears from him when he was a grown man, stressing the importance of hiding your grief, and the tears are threatening to spill over now, except that Scott catches his eye and lifts his glass, speaking in a strong, soothing voice: “To Allison.” They echo his movements and his words, and Isaac cries and wipes his face, there in sight of all of them, and nothing happens.

Once they’ve all eaten their fill, they switch on the TV, where Lydia has queued up three seasons of _Law & Order_ to play. Evidently, Stiles explains, it’s the only show that every single one of them likes to watch. “No wonder it ran so long,” Lydia laughs, “if even we can agree on it.” Any complaints, she threatens, and they’re going to watch _Say Yes to the Dress._

Isaac’s sitting on the floor by Lydia’s side of the couch, and Scott and Stiles are sharing a loveseat across the room. Isaac’s disappointed at this, although he feels a little foolish. His birthday celebration, and the following night, is the last he’s seen of Scott and, although they’ve been texting and calling--sometimes for hours a night--ever since, there’s still no word for what they are, and Isaac knows he shouldn’t be distressed that Scott greeted him with just a hug as usual, or didn’t save a place next to him. 

The food puts them all into a nearly catatonic state. They sink low into their seats, letting episode after episode play with very little conversation passing between them. Now and then, Lydia swirls her fingers through Isaac’s hair; other than that, not a soul moves except to excuse themselves to the bathroom. Despite his hangups, Isaac’s feeling happier than he has in a long time, brainless and trouble-free. 

The whisper is low, far beneath the rumble of the television and the dragging of everyone’s breaths, but Isaac hears it as though Scott’s lips are pressed against his ear. 

“Hey, Isaac?” he says, and his eyes twitch up toward Scott. It’s grown dark in the room, but Scott’s eyes glow faintly, the way they always seem to, catching all available light and reflecting it back with warmth. 

“What is it?” Isaac returns, barely giving the words voice. He tries to keep his lips from moving, careful not to draw the attention of the others. 

“It’s really good to see you,” Scott says, and he’s smiling now, a secret smile meant just for Isaac. “I like talking to you, but--it’s better to see you.” 

“Yeah,” Isaac says. Then, also smiling, “You, too.” 

__

“You all right?” Derek asks him one day. It’s cold out in the garage, so they’re taking a coffee break indoors. Isaac sits with his legs drawn up beneath him on the sofa, and Derek leans against the counter, occasionally checking his phone. The question takes Isaac unawares, and he looks up in confusion. 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asks. 

“I just mean that you’ve been acting, you know--” Derek flounders for words, ending in a shrug. “Better.” 

Isaac only suppresses a smirk. “Who are you texting?” 

Derek rolls his eyes and replaces his phone in his pocket. He doesn’t answer the question, but Isaac doesn’t need an answer, either. The two smile at each other, both a little sheepish and baffled, and they return to their work without another word. 

__

When Christmas comes around, Melissa has everyone over to her place, and they sing carols and watch Christmas specials and trap each other under the mistletoe. Derek’s there, and Deaton, and Sheriff Stilinski, too, though he insists he could be called away at any minute. Isaac doesn’t buy anyone presents, except Scott, whom he pulls aside sometime between _Charlie Brown_ and _Rudolph_ in order to present the key he’s had made. Scott smiles and adds it immediately to his keyring. It’s more than just an invitation to Isaac’s small apartment above the laundrette, and it’s more than just a welcome back into Isaac’s life. When they reenter the bustling living room, Scott’s fingers are tangled with Isaac’s, and they find room to curl together on the sofa, Scott’s head leaning onto Isaac’s shoulder. No one mentions anything, except for Stiles who catches Isaac’s eye and makes an exaggerated kissy face, but Derek, who’s nearby, digs an elbow into Stiles’s ribs, and anyway, the movie is starting, and they’re all settling in. Kira sings along with Burl Ives, and Lydia takes a panorama pic of the whole room for her Instagram, and Isaac syncs his breathing with the rising and falling of Scott’s chest against his side, their hearts falling easily into step. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy ending because Scisaac = love.


End file.
